Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

Milan, May 15 2020 – The “Culture Plan” was approved today by the Council, which defines the guidelines for the assignment of contributions to support operators who offer cultural services in the city. The budget of 2 million euros, which comes from the Mutual Aid Fund for the health emergency of the Municipality of Milan, was allocated to the Culture sector. The approval resolution provides that the amount allocated to culture can be increased by any further donations.

The strategic and operational objectives contained in the "Culture Plan" have the aim of reaching those who work in the field of production, dissemination and cultural diffusion, and are articulated through different lines of action:

• the houses of culture: contribution to the maintenance costs during the emergency of the premises intended for cultural activities and services that express a public function (theatres, cinemas, museums and exhibition spaces, bookshops, cultural associations, training institutes in artistic and performing disciplines, archival locations, hybrid spaces with a cultural vocation, etc.);
• culture and work: contribution to the coverage of damages suffered in relation to the forced suspension of activity;
• FOCUS objective - Fund for sustainable culture: support for pilot projects based on principles of sustainability in the use of resources, construction of collaboration networks, involvement of different cultural supply chains, etc. A quota of up to 200 thousand euros is allocated to this area and projects can be financed with a contribution of up to 40 thousand euros each.

In the next few days a public notice will be published and a technical commission will be appointed which will evaluate the requests and project proposals received based on the addresses listed above and the assignment criteria detailed in the notice.

Once the notice has been released, each operator will be able to submit only one contribution application relating to points 1) or 2), and exclusively through the use of the online platform which will be activated on the website of the Municipality of Milan; Furthermore, applications must be submitted individually and not in an associated form between multiple operators.
As regards point 3), however, the project can also be proposed in an associated form between multiple operators, even among those who have submitted an application in relation to areas 1 or 2.

“The critical situation that citizens and businesses have had to face in these months of lockdown reverberates, in the cultural sphere, in a very strong damage to all those who operate in our city – declares the councilor for Culture Filippo Del Corno -. In these days the cultural operators, who constitute the network of thought, presence and project that nourishes the vitality and plurality of the city community, not only find themselves in the position of having to cover the losses due to lost revenues, but they must also be able to face the resumption of activities in a profoundly different and decidedly more complicated framework. Within the framework of the lines approved by this Council for the management of the emergency, we therefore want to give the greatest possible support to these subjects, and in particular to those who find themselves in a more fragile situation, activating the share of the Mutual Aid Fund reserved to the Culture sector, in order to quickly assign resources, in the form of non-repayable contributions, to support their activities. A special thank you to the Bolton Hope ONLUS Foundation which wanted to direct its substantial donation to the Municipality's Mutual Aid Fund to support the Milanese cultural world". 

The Bolton Hope ONLUS Foundation has in fact donated one million euros to the Mutual Aid Fund of the Municipality of Milan, tying its use to supporting small Milanese cultural entities, put to the test by the health emergency.